And So it Goes

To say that I have been in a bad mood lately is probably a bit of an understatement.  My poor friends has been getting an earful all week long.  They say that very emotional periods in artists' lives lead to their best art.  After this last week I would counter that argument.  I propose that perhaps those emotional times are super crappy and you get nothing at all done.  Then when you get through the week of being super upset, you think, "I gotta get my mind of this" and you start to make, and make, and make, and make, because really at the end of it all that is what you do.  That is how you cope with anything, but obsessing over something else.  Perhaps this is still in keeping with the first adage, but it seems different to me.  The work that I end up creating about emotional events in my life is really crappy but when I am done being emotional, I feel like I've wasted so much time, that then I get things done.  Anyway, I ramble.  If you come to this site, you probably want to look at some art.

I've had a ton of illustration projects that I've been working on.  They are kind of okay to be working on, but nothing that I want to spend the majority of my life working on.  If anything, they make me realize how much I want to work on my own stuff.  So really, I guess I should be thankful for any projects that I receive like that, because they not only help me subsist, but also fuel the desire to make more fine art. 

A month after the thesis exhibition has come down, it still sits in the back of my truck.  I don't know what to think of it.  I put so much time into it, so much thought, and learned so much from it, but in the end, it does not function with the rest of my work yet.  It is a separate entity.  And so it sits in the back of my truck waiting for me.  I did, however, think of it, when I saw notice of a Call for Entries in Toronto.  The show is a square foot show.  All the works are priced the same and measure 12 by 12 inches.  The pre-cursor to the wood blocks was a series of pipe drawings on 2 X 4's which I just so happened to still have.  I sawed 6 of these pieces down to a foot and started to revisit the drawings that I had already done on them.  I worked back and forth between sandpaper and pen, acrylic paint, and then back to sandpaper.  It was one of the more painterly processes that I've been involved with in the past couple years.  Here's a work in progress look at it:

I am really excited about this piece.  I enjoy the wood grain, the bits of paint that show and the bits that have been flecked with the sand paper.  I think this could be an exciting new direction to really explore.  I have done this many times in the past when I want to paint over something, but I haven't left most of them. 

I also ripped through a couple illustrations this week.  I can't share all of them due to contractual limitations, however, here is the upcoming cover to the Bollard Newspaper here in Portland.  This was such a fun project to work on, if only because I used baseball cards as reference.  I love my baseball cards.  I have way too many.  If you saw them, you would think that I was still 8 years old.  I may be.

The text is modeled after the Score Boys of Summer cards from the early nineties.  I love it.  Also of note, I've been drawing a lot more people recently.  It is good to get back in the act of drawing people.  I miss spying a little at the coffee shops and markets.  Just a little.  I don't like being creepy.

Have a good Sunday.  It's beautiful out there.  And if you're from New York, like me, Go Mets.
Peace
-Mike